Chris Gore Claims That Marvel Has “Cleaned House” by Firing Activist Producers After Phase 4’s Catastrophic Failures
It’s no secret that MCU’s Phase 4 was kind of a mess. The phase has the lowest approval rating in the cinematic universe, with the majority of the projects considered “mediocre” at best. Phase 4 gave us gems like ‘She-Hulk’ and ‘Eternals,’ and by the early looks of it, phase 5 already looks like it’s shaping up to be better mostly carried on the shoulders of ‘Deadpool & Wolverine,’ ‘Loki’ and ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.’ – all projects deemed successful.
We know that it was however the catastrophic failure of ‘The Marvels’ that kickstarted some major changes within the studio. Iger himself commented that they will be reducing their creative output in the years to come, and focusing more on quality over quantity – indirectly admitting that the movie was – bad.
Now the most recent rumors brought to you by Chris Gore, Film Threat founder via Critical Drinker’s YouTube channel who claims that following awful phase 4 results, Feige and the rest of the execs have cleaned house and quietly fired all producers that could be labeled as activist:
I do know people who work at Marvel. They have cleaned house, They quietly, months ago, fired all the producers that could be labeled activist. […]Kevin Feige recognizes… basically, he said that ‘we tried it, it didn’t work. […] He’s talking about Phase 4. It didn’t work. No Kang. None of these side characters that don’t have the legacy of classic characters. And if Deadpool & Wolverine proves anything, you’ve heard that phrase ‘male and pale is stale’ — that was spoken aloud across studios, but if you look at box office this year, I would say male and pale is money. And that’s the phrase that I think people should more adopt.
Now the wokeness is often cited as the biggest reason why MCU is failing, but not for the reason you would think. It’s becoming increasingly clear that targeted and represented demographics aren’t coming out in droves to support the products clearly tailored toward them.
The studio can swallow a lot of bad critical reception as long as the project turns out to be profitable, but when you are getting slaughtered in reviews and you are hemorrhaging money – the bottom line is clear, you need to introduce some changes.
The issue, besides obvious bias toward certain demographics, is also the quality of writing, this is something that Gore touched upon as well. I’m sure that you can remember ‘Eternals’ who started an extremely ambitious storyline and left pretty much the highest number of loose ends in the MCU so far, and ‘Secret Invasion’ a TV show that resembled the original comic storyline in the title alone – those projects were badly written and badly executed. It seems that not being familiar with source material was becoming an issue as well.
Gore asserts that Feige and Marvel have dismissed creatives who lack comic book knowledge. He cites Marvel producer Nate Moore, known for his controversial handling of the aforementioned ‘Eternals’ and his stated reluctance to hire comic readers. Moore is now only credited as a producer on ‘Captain America: Brave New World,’ which has undergone significant changes and reportedly some very expensive reshoots. Gore also notes that the director of ‘Secret Invasion’ was instructed not to read the comics and points out Marvel’s hiring of ‘Rick & Morty’ writers.
Additionally, they fired people that don’t know the comics. … But it’s going to be a sea change that will take years. Years. That’s why they are announcing this now. ‘We know we screwed up and failed, but look at what’s coming.’ So we’re going to get two bad movies, two bad TV shows, and maybe a good Fantastic Four film.
Gore touched upon the state of Star Wars under Disney as well, claiming it’s a lost cause since the execs decided to “double down” on the alleged “wokeness.”
Unlike Lucasfilm. Lucasfilm is lost. They’re lost. They are doubling down on all the nonsense. You will never get anything good out of Lucasfilm and Star Wars. That’s it”
We reported on something similar just a few days ago. It seems that the upcoming ‘Skeleton Crew’ is not being received internally, due to allegedly not containing enough DEI principles and politics. But those remain only unconfirmed speculations so far, after all, Gore’s statements will likely never be verified as well. It’s only the future state of MCU projects that will prove whether he was right or wrong.
But it’s clear that ‘The Message” is no longer working – at least when it comes to the bottom line and that was always – money!
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